No Way Out Except From External Intervention
I saw this paper yesterday morning and i can’t stop thinking about it. Like i said on Twitter when sharing it, “you ever see something and just go ‘holy shit, that would explain so much’”.
The paper describes a series of focus groups with autistic people with the invitation prompt centered around “experiences of getting stuck or difficulty doing things”. It then pulls together several common themes from the groups’ respondents; the themes collected by the researchers included “difficulty finding the first step”, “disconnection between intentions and actions”, “expectations of other people”, a constant state of fatigue, “difficulty maintaining relationships”, among others.
The reason i responded the way i did is because a lot of the paper’s themes and responses really resonated with me. As someone who has unofficially considered themself “mildly autistic” for a while now, it was intensely emotional to see this experience laid out so plainly. I felt like the personal experiences of decision fatigue, feeling unable to maintain friendships, feeling over-pressured from external (and internal) expectations, and being thrown off by interruptions to the extent that even personal hobby activities suffer, all shook me to the core.
The paper is long - it took me a few hours to read - but i consider it extremely worth it if any of the things i mentioned sound familiar to you, whether about yourself or someone you know.